<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>This Tornado Loves You by runningscissors</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27950027">This Tornado Loves You</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/runningscissors/pseuds/runningscissors'>runningscissors</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Queen's Gambit (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon Compliant, Character Study, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Introspection, Substance Abuse</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 23:48:02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,438</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27950027</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/runningscissors/pseuds/runningscissors</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"In truth, Beth doesn’t know what it is about Benny that pulls her in."</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Beth Harmon/Benny Watts</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>205</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>This Tornado Loves You</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Canon compliant through series</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1"> </p><p class="p1">In truth, Beth doesn’t know what it is about Benny that pulls her in.<br/><br/>She wouldn’t describe him as handsome per se, not like Townes with his chiselled Rock Hudson features that fuelled her teenage fantasies. Benny is willowy, like a sapling, his face utterly boyish in comparison to his age. But all the same, there’s something compelling about him in a way Beth has found incomparable.</p><p class="p1">Sharp elbows and thin wrists that flick across the board, long fingers that she realized the first time she watched him play could be almost mesmerizing in their deftness. Some strange counterculture bushman with his Akubra and ridiculous dagger, the kind of man who wears a fucking leather duster even in the Nevada heat, like he’s above it all when really he cares about it all more than maybe anyone, even her. It isn’t until she begins to understand who Benny is that she understands these bizarre sartorial choices. They are his calling card, his way of letting everyone in the room know that <em>thee Benny Watts, Grandmaster, U.S. Champion, chess prodigy extraordinaire, best American player since Morphy, Benny Watts is here. </em>Because who is Benny without his celebrity? Who is he if he’s not holding forth over a captive audience, clamouring for his expert opinion?</p><p class="p1">And she hates that the things that annoy her about Benny are also the things that attract her. The way he walks a perpetual tightrope between charm and smug arrogance, that goddamn little smirk of his like he’s got her all figured out, his piercing gaze that stops her in her tracks, his ego and condescension even in the face of her triumph over him in Ohio— <em>well, kid </em>he drawls<em>— </em>because the truth is he does know more than she does. She’s the better player, but he’s got the strategy, the theory in a way that Harry had stressed she needed, but she’d handily dismissed. The confidence he exudes as he swaggers about is sexy in a way that irks her to no end. Even more, because she realizes she did the same thing to him— wanted his attention, his admiration, to rile him up the way he did to her. She’d rolled her eyes at his performative machismo, some swashbuckling pirate high on his own supply— then couldn’t help placing herself in his line of vision, making him think he had come to her when really she’d beckoned him over.</p><p class="p1">Benny Watts was America's best, and he’d studied her games. She couldn’t help but feel flattered, even when, at times, it makes her blood boil. </p><p class="p1">She’d sought him out that night in the Student Union in Ohio, the coffee a flimsy excuse, even to herself, and then he’d skunked her, and she’d never felt more aware of her own body— the way her chest heaved, her blood sizzling in her veins, her mind clear and focused. It wasn’t about winning anymore. It was about beating Benny, breaking him down like he seemed to do so easily to her chess-play.</p><p class="p1">In all the games she’d played, all the tournaments and opens— nothing had driven her like the need to bend Benny Watts to her will. She thinks maybe that was why she’d pursued him relentlessly on the board, like a dog with a bone, time and time again, her pockets filling twice fold with the cash he’d hustled off her in Ohio.</p><p class="p1">It was inevitable, really, that they’d tumble into bed together, sheets tangled around their feet. And once they start, they can’t stop, blowing through Benny’s supply of condoms in the span of just a few days.<br/><br/>“Beth,” Benny pants, hand on his chest to try to catch his breath, the pale yellow light overhead catching his chains as they move with each inhale. The air is thick with the smell of sweat and sex.“We can’t keep doing this. We need to work.”</p><p class="p1">There’s an abandoned game on the kitchen table, an old one of Benny’s versus Shapkin at the last Russian Invitational. Beth had pointed out an error with his rook-bishop combo, and that had been it. </p><p class="p1">“Okay,” she says, propping herself up on her elbows, “no more sex, just studying.”</p><p class="p1">Benny angles his head to look at her, his gaze sliding briefly to her bare chest, pupils blown wide as he meets her eye.<br/><br/>“<em>Christ,”</em> he mutters under his breath, and Beth lets out a girlish giggle as he hauls her back down, another hour lost to the push-pull of their bodies.<br/><br/>And later, when it all comes crashing down around her, after Paris, her relapse and Cléo, she hates how easily he sees through her bullshit. <em>We think the same way </em>Benny had said, and he hadn’t been wrong. Two sides of the same coin. But the problem is, most are blind to their own foibles, and Benny is no different, blinded as he is by their mutual obsession. He wants things on his terms, for Beth to come running back to him like if they dissect her failures on the board in minute detail, he can fix it. Because Benny lives by the board's logic, anything can make sense if they analyze long enough, strip it down to the bolts and build it back up— but Beth can’t this time. She just <em>can’t. </em><br/><br/>“You think I haven’t wanted to lose myself in the bottom of a bottle after a loss like that?” Benny challenges, his voice tinny over the line long distance. But he doesn’t get it, that it isn’t about losing a chess game, not to Beth. It’s her self-worth, an unwanted orphan, until suddenly she excelled and the world wanted her back. Mr. Shaibel, Alma, Townes, Harry, Benny. It was her innate gift at chess that attracted each of them to her in their own way. If she’s not the best, then who is? What good is she? </p><p class="p1">So Beth crawls to the bottom of the bottle— booze or pills, it’s all the same fucking thing, the satisfying clack of the glass against the counter— till the world is fish-eyed and as unclear as she is. Desperate not to think of anything, like her life could simply be put on hold till she is ready to grow up and deal with it. She’d thought Benny was the same, chaffing against the expectations that everyone has to grow up eventually, like Harry Beltik and his sensible life. Benny, with his hovel of an apartment, crummy cups of bitter coffee and cigarettes smoked down to the filter; chess at the centre of his every thought and breath, Beth thought she’d found a fellow addict, but she’d read him wrong, Benny knew how to pull himself from the ledge in a way Beth has never been able. </p><p class="p1">She wants to tear him apart move by move like he can a chess game, analyze all the possibilities. Because if she can crack Benny, then maybe she can crack the code of what makes her tick as well, like a human Rosetta Stone. </p><p class="p1">She should never have asked Benny for the money. Beth had known it was a mistake from the moment she’d uttered it, but hindsight is only 20/20. Alone in her soviet hotel room, she longs for him like an ache, his breath on her cheek as he peers at the board over her shoulder. He'd know just what to say, what match to review, what moves were alluding her. She’d brought his book, not because she’d thought it could help her at all, but just because when she read it, it was like she could hear him in her head— like he was there with her when she needed him the most. But she’d pushed him away, and the great Benny Watts wasn’t accustomed to rejection. </p><p class="p1">She hates that in the end, the rush she experiences in besting Borgov isn’t half of what she feels when she thrashes Benny. There's a part of her that wants it to burn, to eat Borgov alive the way her losses against him do her. She doesn't want his gentlemanly surrender, the palpable relief that flits across his face. The idea that she’s pissed away <em>something </em>with Benny chasing after a win that doesn’t leave her satisfied the way she always thought it would make her want to run back to the bottom of the bottle. But she doesn’t because he called her, and doesn’t that mean something?</p><p class="p1">It has to, she thinks. Benny Watts does nothing in halves. </p><p class="p1">In truth, Beth doesn’t know what it is about Benny that pulls her in. All she knows is that he does.<br/></p><p class="p2"> </p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>